Communist Party. On 3 February 1930 he became the Party Secretary of Phú Riềng and directly led a revolt of more than 5000 workers against the cruel French colonial exploitation at rubber plantation. The movement was repressed by French, Phú Riềng strike leaders were all imprisoned, nonetheless it forced the Michelin company to make certain changes to improve labor's working and living conditions. The Phú Riềng's labor movement 1930, also known as Phu Rieng Do, has become known as the first big labor movement in the history of Vietnam. This remarkable period is chronicled in Trần Tử Bình's memoir, Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation, first published in Hanoi in 1965, and translated into English in 1985. After the Phu Rieng Do incident French colonial government sentenced Trần Tử Bình to 10 years on the infamous Côn Đảo Prison, where he met many communist revolutionary leaders of Vietnam, i.e. Tôn Đức Thắng, Hoang Quoc Viet, Phạm Văn Đồng, Le Van Luong, Pham Hung, Ha Huy Giap, Tran Xuan Do, Nguyen Van Phat and took advantage of this opportunity to improve his knowledge of communist ideology and nationalism. August Revolution In 1936, the Popular Front forced the French colonial government to release some political prisoners from Côn Đảo. Trần Tử Bình was one of them. After being amnestied from Côn Đảo he returned home to work as a clerk in Bình Lục District and secretly continued to take part in communist activities against French. From 1936-1940 Trần Tử Bình was appointed as communist party secretary of Bình Lục District and then party secretary of Ha Nam Province. In 1940 he was elected by the communist party as a member of Northern Region (Tongkin) Committee (Xu Uy Bac Ky) and Commissar of Interregional Network C (including Hà Nam, Nam Đinh, Thái Bình, Ninh Binh Provinces) and network D (Vinh Phuc, Phuc Yen, Phu Tho, Tuyen Quang Provinces) in 1941 and 1943. He became one of the most wanted objects of French Gendarmerie in TongKing during the 1940s. On 24 December 1943 Trần Tử Bình was arrested again in Thái Bình Province and was imprisoned in Hà Nam Prison. In early 1944, after an unsuccessful attempt at jailbreak, he was sent to Hỏa Lò Prison (Hanoi), where he became one of the organizers of a famous collective escape for over 100 political prisoners. After he returned to